You will enter Monday morning's meeting in a fit of vindication. After six months at the agency, reading scripts during lunch breaks and late at night, alone in a sublet off South La Brea, you have found it. A script by an Emerson College/UT Austin/UC Davis Adjunct Professor about the perilous life of a young piano virtuoso/schizophrenic painter/Blues singer of color - homeless for years/hooked on black tar/briefly institutionalized, but brilliant all the while. Discovered at a café/under a bridge/on the pier by a drifting, disillusioned, middle-class, white PR-man… they save each other and show the world the true nature of beauty/the beautiful nature of truth as they ascend to brief stardom and then lose everything.
You will conclude your pitch and feel waves of discomfort emanating from the polite agents and outright snickering from the others. Your boss will be one of the others. He will have told you beforehand that he thought the script sucked and you will have ignored him. You will now eat major shit from him, but you will also know that he'll have enough fun picking on you to keep you employed a while longer.
"Well, what's the target demographic?" a sweet, impossibly-beautiful, thirty-something agent will ask.
You will want to scream, "Everyone! Families! Housewives in Wichita, male 18-30s in Albequerque, Blacks/Hispanics/Asians (depending on the ethnicity of the lead)! Everyone with any shred of a soul/has ever had a dream/stared at a sunset/hummed along to the radio!"
"Mid-twenties," an aging senior partner will answer, "College-educated, east coast, traveled in Europe or Asia. Indie film buff. You could shoot it on video. Shaky-cam. Local cast but the lead is a big name. Make the PR guy young… Joseph Gordon Levitt's very in now. Or, could he be a girl? Make it a love story. I'd like Zooey Deschanel for it. Shoots low… maybe 2 mill… go for the festivals… Seattle, Brooklyn, San Francisco. Might do better internationally."
You will realize after a moment that he is only thinking out loud. He's not actually interested. This will sting in the moment, but what aches hours later will be the realization that he will have been describing you, to a tee.
You are the target demographic. Your tastes are casually predictable, a pure matter of numbers and trends, just like anyone else.
The meeting will have ended with a discussion of a film about talking rabbits, expected to play well with girls aged 9-13. They will target malls and Noggin and cast a girl that looks like Hannah Montana or Malia Obama in the lead.
You will bike home that night, drink a Tecate, and play Rock Band (on medium) alone and watch a little bit of "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" before you fall asleep.
A few days later, you will go to dinner with college friends and tell them about it. They will sympathize by sharing their own stories of grappling with the disillusions inherent in working at what you love—if only tangentially—for a living. "But doesn't it bother anyone?" you will cry, over your third small-batch bourbon, "That being interesting has become a cliché? That some guy in an Ermenegildo Zegna suit in a 90th floor office can predict what films we'll go see and what books we'll pick up and where we'll go to eat dinner to state our already-predicted opinions about all of them?"
It will seem then that dissatisfaction with the Man/the System/the Industry/the Machine is also cliché.
Clunkily, the group will steer the discussion back to memories of college: how drunk you were in February of freshman year/how your mutual always-wacky friend has since been institutionalized/what Professor So-and-so said about the nature of Art as attempting to supplant the "thing itself"/how mean that same Professor was later to some other kid. No one will know what happened to that kid. As dessert is served, everyone will agree to look him up on Facebook later. Nobody will.
After dinner you will tag along with your best friend, Brian/Steve/Raoul who once upon a time seemed destined for fame and glory, but who will presently be designing websites and living in an apartment without A/C. One of his ex-co-workers will be having a house party up in the Valley. On the drive up, Brian/Steve/Raoul will discuss, at length, a screenplay about the nature of terrorism and how that interplays with a generation addicted to Ritalin/Prozac/Xanax that cannot cope without continued self-medication. He will reveal, with glee, the twist at the end where it turns out that the government had planned it all since back during the first Gulf War.
He will use the word "dialogue" as a verb three times on the way up.
The party will be crowded with theatre-types, many in outrageous costumes. You will drink three more Tecates in the corner without speaking to anyone. Brian/Steve/Raoul will be chatting with his ex-coworker about Flight of the Conchords. You will eavesdrop and learn that this is actually a cast party for what someone calls a "movement piece" - a reinterpretation of an Ukranian folk tale involving large foam eggs and nudity. You will have to hand it to the actors, at least they don't seem to mind if no one understands what they're doing. In fact, you will suspect that they'd be distressed if anyone did not find it to be obscure. You will wonder if this the answer? Weirdness for its own sake? Are these actors modern-day Duchamps, diddling with debris and proclaiming it Dada? But on the walls of the house are ironically-hung deer antlers and neon beer advertisements, tin Superhero lunch boxes and Garbage Pail kids, and won't all the rest of them have the same kitschy crap on all of their walls?
She will approach you as you stare at a gigantic, vintage Porno ad above the fake fireplace.
"The Big Suck," she'll say, reading off the title. "Vivian thought she'd blown them all. But then she met Private Dick-tective Raymond Mar-load. Ew."
You won't be able to tell if she's offended by the 1970's hairy genitalia on the poster, or the insult to the 40's Film Noir classic.
"A classic," you will say, "Really a huge achievement in the pornography-parody genre. Director… John Han-Cock was a revolutionary mind."
She will nod, her blonde ponytail dancing snake-like. "Just a casual fan?"
"Oh no," you will say, "I'll have my PhD just as soon as I defend my thesis."
"In Pornographic Studies?" She will still not be 100% sure you are joking.
"It's a correspondence course," you will admit sheepishly, "For 20 bucks a month they send you all the videos online."
She will crack up. You will ask who she knows there and she will say Jenny/Kristin/Azalea. They will work together at a PR firm. You will cringe visibly. She will say she hates it. You will say that everyone in PR says that. She'll agree but say she's serious. There will be an awkward silence.
You will ask if she saw the "movement piece" and she will twitch. It will have been 3 or 5 hours long. She will not be able to describe its awfulness. You will offer to get her another vodka tonic and she will agree with a remarkable smile.
While you're at the bar, Brian/Steve/Raoul will rush over, his hand hiding his face. He will have spotted a former dealer to whom he owes considerable money and insist it's time to go. You will tell him you'll meet him by the car. You'll bring the vodka tonic back only to find Jenny/Kristen/Azalea in tears nearby because her ex will be there with his new girlfriend/boyfriend.
You will apologize for having to run off and she will, to your surprise, hand you her card. She will say, "This weekend—if you're not too busy with your dissertation—give me a call." You will glance at the card as soon as you are out of sight.
Her name will be Susan.
You will call the next night.
That Saturday you will go to Peet's Coffee in Larchmont Village to test the waters. Susan will be from North or South Carolina, have attended college in New England, and you will know 4 to 8 people in common. After trading a few stories about them, you will offer to drive to the Getty Center and she will agree. You will take your Kia, explaining you wanted a Prius but they were too expensive. She will not tell you that the BMW in the neighboring spot is hers (a graduation present) but you'll find out later and think it was nice of her to save you the embarrassment.
You will listen to KIIS FM on the way there, hoping she thinks you're more hip than you are. She will wonder if you are actually gay. This will have been the case for her at least twice before.
She will attempt to share the cost of parking and you will insist on getting it. She will promise to pay for admission and you agree, knowing that the museum is free. On the tram ride up, you will tell her it reminds you of being on the subway in New York City again. She will have lived there too, for no more than two years, shortly after college, until she broke up with her boyfriend, who will have been a paralegal that was always too busy studying for the bar. Now he will be making 6 figures and be married to a girl in Greenwich. You will agree that everyone is much better off with things the way they will be.
As you explore the first exhibits, you'll discuss other places you've traveled. You'll tell a story about the extreme poverty you witnessed in Kenya/India/Laos and she will wince and squeeze your hand because you will have been so brave to have gone there. She will talk about Prague/The Greek Isles/Barcelona and how, while she was there she discovered her secret longing to design dresses/handbags/headbands.
You will both be scolded by a fat security guard for leaning too close to Monet's Irises. You will both frown in mute disapproval as a father pushes his wheelchair-bound son in a wheelchair but never points him towards the paintings.
A room full of religious art will prompt an uncomfortably spiritual discussion. She will be a Unitarian or a lapsed Protestant of some kind. She will talk of putting on a good show for her Baptist grandparents on holidays. You will be agnostic but say you're an atheist, thinking it sounds better. She will grow quiet and drift away from you as she admires a painting of Christ and several angels. You will nervously admire a statue of St. George slaying the dragon.
She'll ask a polite question of a nearby hipster-blogger type guy who is examining the same painting. He will be perfectly unshaven with designer frames that you will suspect are filled with clear glass. He'll have a visible piercing or a tattoo-of-significance. He'll wear skinny jeans and a velvet blazer with a wool cap on his head that makes him appear to be some sort of sea captain on the way to a posh hotel party. To your dismay they'll fall into a long discussion of a nearby Madonna and Child.
Mr. Hipster-Blogger will be undeniably cooler than you. Ivy-league, or else self-educated entirely, maybe a poet from the Colorado mountains or the steppes of Montana. He will reference philosophers by name and understand what they said. He will not even own a television. He will have spent a year backpacking, living off the land in Kenya/India/Laos—whichever one you hit-and-ran-from like a pathetic tourist. He will be a committed Marxist. He will grow beans or pickle things on a farm outside Montecito.
How will you out-unique this guy, whose veins will appear to pump pure authenticity? You will think about leaving. You will wish that you could think of one unique thing about yourself, but you won't be able to. Everything will seem like just another cliché. You will wish you could call the man in the nice suit in the 90th floor office and ask him what you will do next. He would consult his binders full of statistics and punch some numbers into his calculator and inform you that all the numbers indicate that you will… what?
Then, in the next room, you will spot something familiar.
"Can I show you something, real quick?" you will ask her.
She will smile apologetically at Mr. Hipster-Blogger but she will follow you.
You will take her to a painting of a small Victorian girl, exquisitely dressed, waiting in a doorway. It will be "Portrait of Jeanne Kefer" by Fernarnd Khnopff, but you won't pretend you knew that before you read it off the wall. Susan will oddly resemble the girl in the painting.
"In college I read a book called 'What Maisie Knew'" you'll explain, "And this was the picture on the cover. It was about this girl whose parents get a divorce and shuttle her all around. My parents were just getting divorced and it was pretty hellish. The book made me want to work with stories, because it made me feel so much better to see someone else going through exactly what I was going through."
You will have not told anyone this before, as most of your friends will also come from divorced families. They will all have similar stories of how Art consoled them in a time when the world seemed to be ending. And of course now your confession will seem lame and overwrought, but it will be the truth, as commonplace and predictable as it might be.
"Mine split up when I was six," she will say, "But I made it through with Judy Blume."
"Sure," you will say, "Judy Blume. If you like that sort of thing."
She will take your hand again and walk with you, past Mr. Hipster-Blogger, past the religious art, and down a corridor that leads out on a wide veranda, which opens up on all of Los Angeles below.
It will be Los Angeles as far as the eye can see. It will be Los Angeles in the hills to the east, in the sky scrapers to the south, and along the shore to the west. It will be 3.8 million little homes and offices. 3.8 million invisible people leading 3.8 million little lives. 3.8 million webs being woven through one another in the dusky streets. Each of the 3.8 million will be largely oblivious to the whole, to the rest, to their small place inside it all. You will feel like there could be no one down there half as happy as you - who has nearly lost and reclaimed what could still turn out to be love. There will be small men in nice suits who are easing back in Aeron chairs, with statistics in databases before them, all claiming to know—what movies you'll all see and clothes you'll all buy and ways you'll all vote. And perhaps, as a mass, you will be predictable, uniform, and statistical. But only two of you will be leaning forward to kiss in this precise instant, despite the obvious, predictable happy ending against a dramatic sunset. Things will suddenly fall magically into place.
322 Review publishes provocative emerging and established artists. Conceived and operated by former Rowan University graduate students of the Master of Arts in Writing Program, 322 Review is aggressively seeking the best fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and mixed media works of visual art.
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